Isoprene from expired air inside a private car.

The concentration of isoprene inside a small-sized parked private car with one person was found to be of the order of 20 micrograms/m3. Isoprene was then the major non-methane volatile hydrocarbon except in strongly traffic-polluted parking places. On driving, with intermediate fan ventilation, the isoprene levels were one order of magnitude lower.

Physiological response to anaerobicity of glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, in which one or both of the genes encoding the two isoforms of NAD-dependent glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase had been deleted, were studied in aerobic batch cultures and in aerobic-anaerobic step change experiments. The respirofermentative growth rates under aerobic conditions with semisynthetic medium (20 g of glucose per liter) of two single mutants, gpd1 delta and gpd2 delta, and the parental strain (mu = 0.5 h-1) were almost identical, whereas the growth rate of a double mutant, gpd1 delta gpd2 delta, was approximately half that of the parental strain.

Follow-up study of phototreated fullterm newborns.

A follow-up study including examinations made by a paediatrician, an ophthalmologist and a psychologist and complemented with EEG-recordings and a number of laboratory determinations was performed at the age of 3 years on 41 children who had received phototherapy during the first week of life and on 42 control children of the same age. No differences were found in growth, development, social maturity, neurological or ophthalmologic disorders, EEG-recordings or laboratory determinations between both groups. It seems unlikely that phototherapy causes any harmful longterm effects provided that the eyes are shielded.